Grown Up Pizza

There’s a restaurant in Boston that I absolutely LOVE. There used to be many more of them, but it seems like they have downsized. The restaurant is owned by Todd English, so it has to be good!

I have so many great memories from meals at Fig’s…having my friend Julie’s father take the 2 of us and the majority of the boys swim team, romantic dates with Solomon, nights out with my sister in law and brother in law when my nephew Alex was small enough to be put on the table in his car seat. So many meals there, and never, ever a disappointment!

My absolute favorite pizza is called the Bianco. It has parmesan, mozzarella (a little bit) and caramelized onions on the crust. After that’s all cooked it’s topped with a salad of arugula, grape tomatoes, balsamic, EVOO and a little spice. It sounds pretty unexciting, but I promise it’s out of this world!

Solomon’s favorite pizza at Fig’s is a mushroom pizza. It’s really mushroomy. Like hard core. Thankfully they will split pizzas and do half and half of any combination you want, because I used to hate mushrooms. passionately. Solomon always wanted me to have a bite of his pizza, but I was so not interested, because mushrooms grossed me out so much.

Finally, I gave in and tried this pizza. It rocked my world. Seriously. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t ready to abandon my Bianco, but I was ready to fall in love all over again. With a fungus. Go figure.

Suddenly, I became a mushroom lover. This pizza was quite possibly the best mushroom concoction on the whole planet, and I eventually chose to start ordering it (1/2, the other half was my Bianco!). Now that I became such a fan, I order things with mushrooms on a regular basis. Because they are awesome, and that’s the bottom line.

Well, you all know I have a thingfor making pizzaat home, so when Solomon asked me if I could make Fig’s pizza at home, I was up for the challenge. After a little Google searching, I turned up a kickass pizza as close to Todd English’s as I could find and went to work. I did some tweaking, because of what I had on hand, but otherwise, this was pretty darn close to the real thing. It was incredible. The smell alone almost made me go into a trance. Drool.

Rather than making the pizza dough I normally use, I decided that to make this as authentic as possible, I would use Todd English’s pizza dough recipe. I also decided that rather than making a typical round pizza, I would be as authentic as possible. Fig’s serves their pizzas on the bottom of a baking sheet, and they are rectangular, making for an amazing thin crust. I did my best I think! I sprinkled the cookie sheet with cornmeal to keep it from sticking, then went to town with my rolling pin, right on the baking sheet.

Then I drizzled a little EVOO, salt, pepper and 2 cloves minced garlic on top of the crust and blended it all in.

While I was doing this, the mushroom puree was cooking away. I took an onion and diced it, and let it saute in about a tbsp. of olive oil with 2 cloves minced garlic until translucent (sounds like how most of my recipes start, huh?).

Then I deglazed the pan with 1/2 cup red wine. I also drank some, obvi. Call me a dork, but I always think it’s so cool to deglaze a pan with wine, I love how all of the bits come off of the bottom of the pan, and the sizzle!

Next, I added 2 packages of mixed mushrooms and let them cook until they were nice and soft.

Once the mushrooms were soft, I added 1 tsp. dried rosemary, a few pinches of salt, and half a cup of heavy cream.

I have to tell you that this was quite possibly the most amazing smelling thing that ever entered my kitchen. I didn’t even want to bother making the pizza because the smell of the mushrooms cooking away was out of this world.

I realized I couldn’t just leave it sitting there on the stove forever, because it really wasn’t going to be a good air freshener, so I used my best friend to puree it all together, then spread it on top of the crust.

I then covered the mushroom puree with 6 oz. of thinly sliced fontina cheese.

This got covered with 2 beautiful thinly sliced portabella mushrooms.

I then took out one of my graters, and grated fresh parmesan (none of that jarred stuff!) on top, about 2 tbsp., and a little bit more black pepper.

I also picked up this beautiful piece of food porn…truffle oil. OK, if you’ve never tried it, do it NOW. NOW. I can’t even describe the taste other than to say it’s OUT OF THIS WORLD. I’ve never tried anything with truffle oil that was bad. In fact, I’ve never tried anything with truffle oil that was good. It’s always phenomenal. 100% mind blowingly good! I had to practice a lot of self restraint and just drizzle a little truffle oil on top (mostly because that sucker is pricy, and I want to save it!).

Once my gorgeous pizza was done, it cooked for only 7 minutes in a 500º oven.

Cheers!

It was so good that it almost made me cry. Seriously. The bottom line is, I need more mushrooms and truffle oil in my life. Any ideas what else I should make with truffle oil?

What did you think of the Grammy’s last night? How about the fashion?

Lady Gaga’s dress was crazy…that was seriously one amazing piece of art! Plus, I thought her performance with Elton John was fantastic.

I also thought Heidi Klum looked stunning:

I also thought that Katy Perry’s dress was stunning, but I could have done without the bangs!

truffle oil. nice.
award shows. i have not been to a movie in 4 yrs, since i was pregnant. All those people…i am clueless about. Well not heidi k or katy p. But the rest of them, fairly under a rock when it comes to that stuff these days. But i could talk barbies and bitty baby’s with you 🙂

Holy yum, that pizza looks incredible! I have never made my own pizza dough, can you believe that? In fact, I have never made a single thing that involves using yeast. I recently bought some and have been meaning to try it out. Have any easy starter recipes that you would recommend for a newbie?